


eyes like the ocean

by pvwork



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Blood, Friendship/Love, M/M, Unrequited Love, Violence, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-22 06:53:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/910227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pvwork/pseuds/pvwork
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Torune and Fu are part of a unique program within Root.</p>
            </blockquote>





	eyes like the ocean

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly a lot of rambling and strange metaphors to try and get over my feelings of Ep. 317, the flashbacks, and the horrible dramatic irony. Oh, Torune.

There were six people in the room total. Three teams of two.

Torune and Fu sat in the very front of the two people desks and waited patiently for the their assignment to be revealed to them. It was very quiet. The sound of breathing was barely audible, and as almost, newly minted Root agents they were too well trained to fidget.

Torune could almost feel Fu slide a glance at the doorway just as a member of ANBU walked in. The figure who walked in was of average height and had a long, black braid swinging to each step. The swirling tattoo on a pale shoulder was red as blood and twice as stark.

"You are the best operatives this cycle. This gives you privileges. You will be keeping your given names. You have the chance to become Danzo-taichou's personal bodyguards. Most importantly, you will not be killing your partners, your brothers. This is a unique opportunity for you all, as individuals and as partners. Do not waste this gift you have been given," She said, almost pleasantly. She paused to allow the relief to sink in, but only for a moment.

Torune felt a little bubble of brightness grow in his chest. He didn't know what to call it, and he daren't think that it might be hope, but he felt lighter all of a sudden. Brother. He had two now.

Despite the fact the woman before them had begun to speak once again, all Torune heard was a humming, there may not have been hope in the yawning pit that was growing everyday in his chest, but there was relief that he and Fu would be together for a little while longer. Maybe even forever.

"We are Root. We the unseen ones who support the great tree of Konoha from the depths of the earth."

She then swept out of the room as abruptly as she arrived.

\--

"Emotions!" Fuu said. He laughed.

Torune scuffed his sandals on the soft dirt of the training grounds and drank from his canteen. Fu's laugh had changed over the years. In the beginning, when they had just met, it had been a marker of Fu's genuine amusement, but now it was a dry thing, barely more than a huff of breath. He looked at Fu from behind his masked eyes and thought, 'Here is a boy who belongs to the sun.' Fu's strawberry blond hair was falling out of his tie, and fine strands were clinging to his sweaty neck. His eyes were fever-bright after their sparring and even though his skin was pale after so many hours and days and weeks spent underground and away from the sun there was a still a ruddy tint to his cheeks. 'The Yamanaka's run flower shops all over Konoha,' Torune reminded himself.

"We know all about them," Fu said, the sarcasm in his voice faint and muffled. "We hardly talk with anyone in a way that could possible incite any feelings. I only talk to you and you're like a brick wall, or a noble gas, barely reactive. You're mind must be like the surface of a calm lake. There's obviously life under the surface though!" Fu tilted his head thoughtfully at this, and Torune felt like he should have brushed away the soft bangs that fell into Fu's eyes without his forehead protector and maybe laughed in a pleased way. Instead he took another sip of water and reached out to sharpen Fu's kunai for him after taking out a whetting stone.

He answered with his silence.

"I'm kind of excited." Fu said. "It's something new to master. I mean, there are only so many new ways to execute a deadly jutsu. What do you think they'll have to teach us about them?"

\--

Fu could have been a firecracker in another life.

Torune is just mild, mild, mild but he has never felt more alone.

It's his third day with Root and already he misses the forest and Shino's blank, round glasses and thinks that even though the Aburame are a clan of subdued and quiet people they are nothing like the cold concrete that Root operatives must be made of, poured from the same unforgiving mold. Fu is a beacon in the darkness underground, and he pulls Torune around to the training grounds, to the barely existent classrooms with no doors, and to the bath stalls.

"You'll get used to it. Don't be such a downer." He says under the ice cold spray, lips a fetching shade of pale blue.

He finds a friend under that quiet brass, that sly smile, and he thinks he is doing well for himself with Fu by his side. Mostly because of Fu.

"And I think you'll like the classes the best. We just sit quietly and let ANBU operatives lecture us and then we get live demonstrations that we get to participate in! It's pretty exciting, but not when someone looses a limb. That's just a bummer, but you'll get used to it."

Maybe it's because he was picked by Danzo a little later than most. Maybe it is because of the actual, physical mask he is allowed to wear, hiding a vast majority of his face. Maybe it is his family, already less expressive than average people even though they not completely void of any sense of warmth and caring, but Torune never gets over the fact that boys will kill their brothers and they will never be the same for it.

Every arterial spray when a jutsu goes wrong, every efficient move by the stand by medical nin who is unforgiving and quick with each motion, makes Torune think of plant roots, the starch they store to withstand drought and survive in the darkness. These lessons he learns are hard. He will have to forget the sun.

\--

He forgets some times. How it feels to want something for himself.

It's very frustrating to have forgotten. Even when Root operatives are let out, they travel by night and when Danzo wants to test their mettle, wants them to train or fight, they do so in darkness guided by star light. It's almost like running through performing a jutsu too quickly and missing a seal somewhere in the middle. The growing horror of your own incompetence, that feeling of awful things that will happen and will happen beyond your control, it is unpleasant.

But he's quite forgotten how horrible feels.

Fu is waning, a candle burning too fast, and in his place there is wax and ash and the lingering scent of lilies. In his place is a colder man, someone who curves his lips grimly at Torune less and less frequently and even though the warmth is being leeched out of him by existence, there is a camaraderie between them that Torune is certain Fu still feels as strongly as that first day the other boy pushed him into a shower stall and told him to 'enjoy the rain'.

\--

Torune lay still as the dead in his bed and listened to Fu breathe steadily in his sleep. There was something soothing about knowing he would always be by Torune's side until they died, probably together.

He thought about a life without Fu's breathy laugh or the blue of his eyes that looked like the ocean on the best days to be out by the beach and thought it was best not to think about such things. And he remembered the way Fu had held out a kunai that one day months ago and told him to help him cut his hair and feeling so proud to have such trust placed in him. Remembering the feeling--the barely there drag on his gloves--of the soft skin at the nape of Fu's neck and the way his hair was a giving and nothing like the stiff, straight strands of his own hair had made his chest tighten at the memory. Fu's hair was so soft. It must have been the only part of him that was vulnerable in any way and Torune felt protective all of a sudden, laying there like a corpse and listening to his brother, partner, breathe the deep breaths of the dreaming. And he remembers letting Fu tug the kunai out of his gloved hands and reaching up to pat at his newly cut hair and he remembers imagining a time when he could reach out whenever, however, and just tangle his fingers in strawberry blond strands that must have caught the sun like the autumn leaves that decorated Konoha to hail the coming of winter.

And Torune lay in the dark like he was already in the shadow world and thought some more about emotions. His own and where they went.

\--

His beetles feel no emotions. Torune feels none either. But there is a little hollow in his chest cavity that will not fill up no matter how many corpses he rolls into the giant pit before him and he supposes he can attribute that feeling that something is hugely amiss to the fact that Fu is not by his side, dead and preparing to kill the living right along with him.

He wonders where his partner might have gone off to after their capture by Madara.

The Jar of Poison jutsu is almost complete; he is finished. Danzo-sama is nowhere to be found, Fu is gone, and Torune is dead but stuck in the world of the living. As he waits for his beetles and his jutsu and the world to end he remembers the feel of Fu's skin under his fingers and the barely there give of the muscles in his forearm and feels guilty his mistake may of cost them their lives. But in his fingertips lingers the warmth of Fu's skin and that trusting, knowing, thankful look in Fu's eyes, part pride at Torune's accomplishments with his controlling his bugs and part regret that Madara is not dead. It's the last thing Torune remembers about his partner.

When Shino arrives, older and much wiser with friends at his side, Torune feels a proud of his change.

"I wanted a memento of you." Shino says.

And that is how Torune knew he would not be forgotten. And within his memories, there lies Fu.  



End file.
